Anonymous, Mon cueur a demy se depart

En voyant sa dame au matin 3v · Busnoys, Antoine

Appearance in the group of related chansonniers:

*Dijon ff. 74v-75 »En voyant sa dame au matin« 3v Busnoys PDF – Facsimile

*Laborde ff. 83v-84 »En voyant sa dame au matin« 3v PDF (see Dijon) – Facsimile

Reworkings, citations, and use in other compositions: See Fallows 1999, p. 245.

Other source:
Bologna Q16 ff. 124v-125 »En voiant sa dame« 3v · Facsimile (Q016_254)

Edition: Busnoys 2018 no. 6 (Dijon).

Text: Rondeau quatrain; full text in Dijon and Laborde; also in Paris 1719 f. 113, ed.: Schwob 1905, p. 102; Paris 1722 f. 48; Chasse 1509 f. P3-P3v “Rondel joyeulx d’ung amoureulx”.

After Dijon and Laborde:

En voyant sa dame au matin
pres du feu ou elle se lasse,
ou est le cueur qui ja se lasse
de regarder son beau tetin?

Alors se dit maint bon tatin
quant on s’entretient face a face

en voyant sa dame au matin
pres du feu ou elle se lasse.

En ung beau doublet de satin
quant on la tient et on l’embrace,
c’est ce qui tout ennuy efface 1)
maulgré Faulx Dangier, le matin.

En voyant sa dame au matin
pres du feu ou elle se lasse,
ou est le cueur qui ja se lasse
de regarder son beau tetin?

Seeing one’s lady in the morning
by the fire where she is dressing,
where is the heart that would ever tire
of admiring her beautiful bosom?

Then one feigns many good knocks
when we are together face to face

seeing one’s lady in the morning
by the fire where she is dressing.

When one holds and embraces her
in a lovely satin slip,
this is what effaces every worry
in spite of Faulx Dangier, the scoundrel.

Seeing one’s lady in the morning
by the fire where she is dressing,
where is the heart that would ever tire
of admiring her beautiful bosom?

1) Dijon, line 11, “c’est qui ...” (error).

Evaluation of the sources:

The Dijon scribe copied this song from his exemplar into the Dijon as well as into the Laborde chansonnier. In Dijon he skipped a small word (“ce”) in the tierce, and in Laborde he introduced a small variant by dotting a figure in the contratenor (b. 32), else the only differences consist in the variable use of coloration. In the younger Italian chansonnier in Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, MS Q16, the song is found in a near identical version without text and attribution. Its exemplar may have been very close to the Dijon scribe’s; the poem was omitted except for a few first words, but the signs in all three voices marking the repeat of the couplets (bar 18), which the Dijon scribe omitted, were maintained.

Comments on text and music:

This rondeau is a rare example of a completely happy love song, or a “Rondel joyeulx d’ung amoureulx” as the printed version in La Chasse et le depart d’amours of 1509 has it. In spite of describing carnal, sensuous love with the lover enthusiastically looking at his lady dressing before the fire in the morning, her breasts, the feel of her body through a satin shift, the poem is perfectly courtly in rich rimes and alluding to the Roman de la Rose through the allegorical figure, the faithless “Faulx Dangier” who oversees the back entrance of the castle of the Rose, through which discarded lovers has to leave.

The poem is elegantly set for three voices, a wide-ranging upper voice, g–d'', a calmer tenor, f–g', and a low contratenor, F–a, with snippets of imitation and quite long melismatic extensions of the short (octosyllabic) text lines. The second section opens in straight unison canonic imitation in the upper voices, and an offbeat placement of many syllables seems intentional, all contributing to the easy variety and balance of the song.

PWCH January 2019